As my time in my current job winds down and I frantically try to figure out how folks in the regular world operate (what do you mean you don’t wear suits (or ties) — like at all? This isn’t just a Friday thing?), I had a chance to finish reading Matthew Cutter’s Closer You Are: The Story of Robert Pollard and Guided by Voices, which was a really solid history of one of my favorite bands. (As evidenced by their frequent appearance in blog posts, including most recently at #5 on last year’s annual recap.) It’s a nice complement to another GBV biography, that of James Greer’s Guided by Voices: A Brief History, and similarly takes you all the way back to the beginning, when Bob was teaching and the relentless band he would front for three decades was just an idea in his ever-fertile/fervent head.
Early on, the band didn’t really play anything. In fact, the band didn’t really exist at all in the very beginning, it was just a concept that Bob had and made art to — fake album covers for bands he made up, complete with equally fictitious song titles. He’d make dozens of these and store them away, a true creative outlet for a (then) conjured entity, but that latter reality wouldn’t stop Bob from talking about how he was in a band to anyone that would listen. He was still teaching full time and increasingly unhappy with his day to day life, so it was almost like he was willing this fantasy into reality. He started learning guitar and recording himself in what would become a long-running habit, capturing his limitless thoughts and impulses in their unvarnished glory — good, not so good, and sometimes (oh so many times) outstanding.
Eventually he did form a band of real humans — but they still didn’t really play much music. The band, such as it was, was basically Bob and his brother, along with a couple of friends who’d get together and mess around in the basement (aka the Snakepit), bashing away at instruments in between drinking a ton of beer and playing basketball. That didn’t stop them from acting like a real band, though, including doing a bunch of photo ops with local magazines and press outlets, even though they were essentially a band in name only — they had no songs, they had no label, they barely knew how to play their instruments. And yet “‘anytime Bob had a photo op, we were on it,’ [early manager Pete] Jamison says. Without anything close to a real band, nevertheless Bob, [his brother] Jimmy, and [guitarist] Mitch kept refining their rock image, taking part in all the activities a band would — aside from recording albums or playing shows. ‘We did photo sessions to make it feel like it was real. We were working on getting the look and the moves down,’ says Bob. He describes his policy at the time as: ‘You gotta look a little bit cool to be in my band that can’t play.'”
This hilarious fiction never seemed to be questioned and never seemed to cause them any issues, which is amazing in today’s world of total information and social media gossip. I can only imagine what would happen to someone trying this today — I feel like the farce would be unearthed almost immediately and the perpetrators pilloried and ridiculed by the online trolls. Yet thankfully Dr Bob and crew emerged unscathed and eventually began recording actual songs and playing actual shows. They recorded their first album, played a few gigs, seemed to be gaining some momentum — and then Bob suddenly dissolved the band in ’86. “It would be more than seven years before the band played another show.”
Despite the breakup, Bob kept messing around with the band (an ever rotating thing, even then) in the pit in the years that followed, recording and experimenting, trying to sell their efforts when they could. They’d hangout and drink (relentlessly), taking in various Dayton bands in their downtime and expressing their opinions in rather colorful ways. If the guys “didn’t like a band, they elevated heckling to a performance of its own. Clapping and cheering like they were at a football game after a band’s opening number. ‘Play one more, man! Just one more!’ They’d dance ironically, or make a show of holding their noses. Sometimes they brought individually wrapped slices of processed cheese to throw at the band — with just the right aim the cheese would go fwap! onto the frontman’s cheek and slide away in a smear of oil.” Now, yes, this makes the guys sound kind of like dicks (which I’m sure they’d admit to if asked), but you gotta admire the creativity a little. The thought of a bunch of big, working class dudes going to a dive bar with a pocket full of Kraft cheese slices is a laughably ridiculous image — one they apparently did a lot.
The book is filled with great details like that. It explains that Bob, still teaching at the time, was (unsurprisingly) “the ‘cool teacher’… art festooned every wall, much of it his own collage work… Bob passed the non-instructional time by creating album covers at his desk and regaling the students with ghost stories… on playground duty, he would make up songs about what he saw, or aliens or elves,” giving us insight into why it’s seemingly so easy for him to create the vast array of characters and images in his lyrics. That Bob “always wanted to be the Beatles on record and the Who live (…and Cheap Trick backstage).” (Aspirations I think they’ve largely lived up to, at least for the latter two.) That one of the band’s iconic songs, “I am a Tree,” was actually a cover from guitarist Doug Gillard’s band, Gem.
There’s also hilarious, random asides — there was the time when Bob and his brother were in the Snakepit playing/recording and they were interrupted by a bunch of local kids who were challenging them to a game of basketball. They apparently destroyed the boys and then went back to the basement to continue drinking/playing/recording while the kids slunk off to lick their wounds. There was the time(s) the band slept on the hood of their car and random alley couches, surrounded by beer bottles and other trash (much of which they generated), because they couldn’t get a hotel room and were too hammered to drive. They’d wake up the next morning somewhat befuddled by their surroundings, shrug, and get back on the road to play the next show.
Cutter does a great job capturing both the craziness of life on the road and the endless struggle the band has had to survive — whether the grind of all the performing, the endless amount of lineup changes and material, or the (still) indifference of many in the mainstream. Eventually the band’s albums started catching on with the trendsetters in New York in the early 90s, which got the band to start playing live again, culminating with a now-legendary show at CBGB where the band wowed a packed house with an epic, sweaty set. The guys were off to the races after that — Lollapalooza, international tours, growing buzz for their albums, almost unvarnished status as indie legends — but for all the ballyhoo for the glory days and the original lineup, as Cutter writes, “it bears mentioning that the ‘classic lineup’ of Pollard, Sprout, Demos, Mitchell, and Fennell played together for roughly two and a half months, a mere seventeen shows, and — barring outtakes — on two released tracks as a band. But they created an updraft on which even a jumbo jet could glide.”
Bob and the boys have been riding that airstream for an additional two and a half decades and are currently in the midst of another “golden” era, having released an excellent string of albums over the past few years, earning themselves a spot on my year end list for the first time for their trio of excellent albums last year, as mentioned above. They’ve got more in store for us this year (they just dropped Surrender Your Poppy Field, which I’m working through now) and I don’t think Bob will ever stop with his side projects — Cutter describes a whopping 17 distinct ones that Bob cycles between in the book, including his solo outings (!) — so will be great to see what comes down the pike.
Cutter’s description of the band’s sound midway through the book is one of the more fitting explanations for why I think they’ve earned such a passionate, devoted following — “Whereas Pavement’s lo-fi phase radiated an aura of whatever, Guided by Voices charged their lo-fi sound with all right! enthusiasm. The lyrics suggested multiple meanings, but didn’t insist on any; it was art that asked, What do you think? and invited the listener to meet it halfway.” That, coupled with the sheer variety, quantity, and quality of the music I think gives as good an insight into why so many people love this band (and why their live shows are such enjoyable, exultant affairs). A really solid read about a really solid band — well done, Mr Cutter…
Dr Bob’s mention of GBV’s Beatles inspiration reminds me I also had a chance to read another of the 33 1/3 series, this one on that band’s final album, Let It Be. Or at least I thought it was their final album — turns out while it was released after Abbey Road, well after the band had broken up, it was actually recorded right after The White Album — ten WEEKS after — and despite having filled that with over 30 songs, the band managed to run through and record an astonishing TWO HUNDRED songs in the seven days of recording here. (Sure, there were a bunch of covers, but even accounting for that fact they still managed to record a dozen originals here, plus early versions of the songs that would fill up Yellow Submarine and Abbey Road the following year.) That’s an impressive amount of production — almost GBV-like, one could say! — and an interesting backdrop to sessions that were otherwise notorious for being plagued with tension (several of the members were no longer speaking to each other). It’s a sad epilogue to such an amazing band, and an album I’ve always felt was unfairly criticized. Aside from faves like “Two of Us” and “I Me Mine,” they also did versions of earlier songs like “Act Naturally” to get the blood flowing (which thanks to the surprisingly enjoyable Ken Burns Country Music documentary I learned was a cover of a big country hit by Johnny Russell.) I’ve been fixated on this one lately, so enjoy one of the seemingly infinite examples for why these guys were so great:
Lastly, we’ll close with a new feature, hiding over there in the right side of the page under the “I’ve Been Everywhere, Man…” title. In addition to all my music suggestions, I’ve long kept a tally of places to go in various cities/countries I’ve visited that I like to share with folks so they gorge/enjoy themselves appropriately. Since folks always ask and I always try to remember where the heck I stashed the text or email (or worse, handwritten nonsense), I figured I should embrace the power of technology and my beloved blog so it’s there for easy access. (Besides — I know NO one is keen on talking to me if they don’t have to. #knowthyself)
Unsurprisingly we’ll start with my favorite place on earth, my beloved city by the lake, and the ever-growing list of places I try to visit whenever I get back there. It’s a mix of food, drink, and regular tourist items that I’ve battle tested over the years (and added to thanks to recommendations of folks I’ve given it to), so feel free to use it as justification/inspiration for scheduling a trip there yourself. I’ll add additional cities over the coming weeks/months, but in the meantime soak up the glory of the greatest place on earth and get yourself on a plane as soon as humanly possible. (At least until coronavirus grounds all air flight and we’re forced to hunker in our basements until spring.) I promise you won’t be let down…